This weeks Literary Ledger 06 to 13 February 2026

Welcome to your weekly roundup of all things books! We’re keeping it short and sweet, just five stories to keep you in the loop without overwhelming you. Think of this as your quick fix for staying connected to the book world.

I) From History to Books: Why I Might Finally Give Podcasts a Chance

The Rest Is History, a history podcast (duh), is hosted by historian and author Dominic Sandbrook and author and translator Tom Holland. It launched in 2020 and now releases around 150 episodes a year, boasting millions of listeners and holding the title of one of the most successful history podcasts out there.

Now, the production company behind it, Goalhanger (co-founded by Gary Lineker), is launching a new podcast about books called The Bookclub. Each episode is expected to focus on one book, with discussion and a “definitive ranking” of the work. It’s co-hosted by Dominic Sandbrook (of The Rest Is History) and Tabitha Syrett, a producer on the show. Honestly, I’m a little surprised I wasn’t invited, clearly they haven’t heard of Spilling the Ink… (please know that I am being sarcastic)

The episodes will cover both classic and modern works. I’m usually not much of a podcast person, either you’re a podcaster or you’re not. My dad is obsessed, and that gene clearly didn’t pass down to me or my siblings. But this might be the exception. After all, it’s a subject I’m genuinely passionate about… who knows?

II) Penguin Random House Launches £150k Grant for Children’s Bookshops

The National Year of Reading just keeps delivering! Penguin Random House has launched the Penguin Children’s Bookshop Grant, committing £150,000 to support independent bookshops across the UK. The grant is designed to help bookshops develop creative activities and programmes that make reading exciting and accessible for young readers.

Who can apply:

• UK independent bookshops with a dedicated children’s section, where bookselling is the main source of income.

• Applicants can request between £1,500 and £5,000 to fund initiatives.

• Projects must be free for children, young people, and families to participate in.

  
  

Applications opened in February 2026 and close at the end of March 2026. Successful bookshops will be notified in April, with projects taking place throughout 2026.

III) Rising Stars: Bonnier Books UK’s Editorial Promotions to Watch

Bonnier Books UK has announced several promotions within its editorial team:

• Kelly Smith – Promoted to Publishing Director at Zaffre (adult trade imprint). Previously Editorial Director.

• Ella Whiddett – Promoted to Editorial Director for Children’s Fiction. Previously Senior Commissioning Editor.

• Amelia Warren – Named Senior Commissioning Editor at Templar Books. Previously Editor.

• Georgina Kyriacou – Named Senior Commissioning Editor at Studio Press. Previously Editor.

These are names to keep an eye on, they’re moving up fast, and in the tiny world of publishing, we’ll no doubt be hearing a lot more from them.

IV) No New Books at Echo: Publishing Is a Business, After All

More on Bonnier Books: the publisher is no longer acquiring new titles for its imprint Echo Publishing, effective immediately.

Echo is a bespoke Australian imprint focused on books for the Australian and New Zealand market. Over the past five years, Bonnier invested in building Echo’s list to develop a sustainable local publishing programme. They’re not shutting Echo down entirely, but it won’t commission or buy new books moving forward.

It’s a reminder that publishing is a business, if a department/imprint isn’t driving sales, it just won’t continue.

V) All Style, No Substance: My Take on the 2026 “Wuthering Heights”

It feels like yesterday I was writing about my reaction to the trailer for "Wuthering Heights", when in reality it was all the way back in September 2025. Ah, how far we’ve come! I watched the film on Valentine’s Day, and after all this time since the trailer, I had low expectations, but even then, I realised I was being far too optimistic.

As much as I tried to forget that this music-video–style adaptation is “inspired by” Emily Brontë’s classic, I obviously couldn’t. It was offensively bad in how much it debased the heart and core of the work. I am, and will always be, mad at the casting of Heathcliff. Honestly, it feels like since Saltburn, Emerald Fennell (the director) has had a crush on Jacob Elordi and just wanted to live out a personal fantasy. After all, she did say in an interview:

“Like many people who love this book, I’m kind of fanatical about it – Everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.”

Yes, she said that in response to questions about turning a "dark-skinned gypsy" into a white man. So, she was able to imagine the characters partaking in BDSM, but not “go as crazy” as to imagine Heathcliff as the colour he was written to be. She also admitted the adaptation reflects what her 14-year-old self thought of the book, which is both the laziest excuse and, honestly, something I don’t even want to delve into.

Why was sadomasochism considered more important than the commentary on racism, which shaped Heathcliff’s upbringing and was such a central part of the plot?

And the worst part? Realising that Edgar Linton was played by Shazad Latif, a person of colour. They race-swapped the characters, which should never have happened. Now, the man Cathy is deeply in love with, who understands her more than anyone, is a white man. And the man who she could never fully love, the one she found irritating and indifferent towards… is the complexion we expected Heathcliff to be. 

The characters are seriously underdeveloped. The montages we get feel like a desperate attempt to cover up the weak script and all the overall changes to the story. Their “ongoing tension” feels completely forced because we barely see the societal pressures keeping them apart. Even though I’d read the book, I kept watching the movie thinking, “Why can’t they just get together? What’s actually stopping them? It seems so easy…”

And the chemistry? Nonexistent. Honestly, it felt like more effort went into selling their love in the press than in the actual film. By the time Catherine dies and Heathcliff is supposedly devastated, my eyes were bone dry, I wasn’t moved in the slightest. Oh, and Elordi’s wig in the first half? Rough.

Another thing that really annoyed me was the age issue. I’m never one to say that women of a certain age can’t do something… unless that thing is playing a seventeen-year-old girl. Margot Robbie is thirty-five, so when I see her acting like an insolent, bratty, childish, spoiled teen, it just looks dumb. It doesn’t feel right, it feels infantilising, like watching a couple use baby talk on each other. Gross and weird. If you’re not a toddler or talking to a dog, stop it.

But that’s exactly what we get: a grown woman pretending to be a teenager. If Emerald Fennell wanted that performance, why not just cast a younger actress, where the behaviour would make sense and require real acting instead of the forced affectation? This feels, frankly, like fulfilling a fanfic-style fantasy: Robbie is closer in age to Fennell than to a seventeen-year-old Catherine, so maybe the tale feels more tangible that way.

The scene that really drove this home, beyond the fact that Robbie looks like she stepped straight out of the contemporary world after wrapping Barbie, is when Catherine accidentally walks in on a BDSM roleplay. She’s supposed to be shocked and horrified, as you would expect from a young girl seeing sex for the first time. But Robbie a grown adult, so no one is buying it. Even if she were a spinster in the late 18th century, she would likely have a basic understanding of sex. Especially given the environment Catherine grows up in: in the opening scene, she witnesses a hanging, hears boys joking about the condemned man’s erection, and reacts with exhilaration, she’s not prudish, shouting with glee when he dies.

So why does Fennell insist on casting an older actress while demanding innocence and naivety? Is it somehow meant to be “sexier”? Who knows. Honestly, I doubt even Fennell knows. 

Even the sex scenes between Cathy and Heathcliff felt surprisingly tame, which left me baffled. If the film is going to position itself as a psychosexual exploration, then go big or go home, and midway through that movie, it should have been me going home.

It’s not that I wanted raunchy sex scenes; I knew from the start what I wanted from Wuthering Heights, and I knew that I wasn’t going to get it. But why sell the movie as some provocative, psychosexual charged story, if the actual sex is underwhelming? This might sound weird, and it’s not that I was bothered by the lack of nudity per se, but all the scenes between Elordi and Robbie were fully clothed and mild. And that’s fine. What isn’t fine is that Fennel demands to take out all the substance and beauty of the book to satisfy some half-baked fantasy of erotic psychodrama… only to deliver something so disappointing. So she didn’t succeed in making Brontë proud by delivering a faithful, thoughtful adaptation, and she didn’t succeed at shocking us either, which seems to be her forte in perverse, erotic storytelling. So I’m left confused about what her intention was here.

Don’t even get me started on Isabella, whose character is, of course, reduced to a sub who supposedly enjoys being abused by her husband, Heathcliff, and kept prisoner. It’s especially disappointing when a woman adapts her female characters this way, you want to expect better of them. Isabella also experiences horrific abuse from Heathcliff in the book, but she doesn’t enjoy it. She runs to London with her son to escape him. In this movie? Of course she apparently loves being treated like dirt, all because Elordi is too hot to resist, where even taking a beating becomes… desirable.